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I had a bunch of academic articles about Falun Gong saved from classes on both American and Chinese religion in undergrad, but I can't find most of them now. Putting together what I remember offhand with some research from Wikipedia just now: Falun Gong, interchangeably called Falun Dafa, was started in China by a guy named Li Hongzhi in the late 80s/early 90s. At that time, resulting from the broader cultural liberalization under Deng, qigong (think yoga - physical movement and breathing exercises with a spiritual component that people buy into to varying degrees) was massively popular across China and the Chinese diaspora; there were tons of organized groups practicing it, including Li's group. A detail that sticks in my mind from lectures was that there were many CCP, government, and military officials practicing Falun Gong-style qigong in the early/mid-90s. Unlike other qigong groups, Falun Gong was increasingly banned by the Chinese government after a policy change in the mid-90s. Based on the wider qigong situation and how the Chinese government responds to other religious groups, my guess would be that the problem was Li's group was both too widespread for their comfort (including among Party and military personnel) and wasn't integrating with government-sanctioned qigong groups or recognizing government authority over Li. The content of their beliefs isn't really relevant to the crackdown IMO. Falun Gong basically had no political aspect at that time (they became quite popular and widespread a couple years after Tiananmen), all of that developed in the early 2000s in response to the crackdown. I'm personally not interested in talking about how Weird and Crazy some religious group's ideas are in their own right, especially religious ideas that are framed as exotic and bizarre in the US but are much more mainstream within a different cultural context. In the 90s, Falun Gong (like other qigong groups) was seen as unremarkable within China in terms of its beliefs, practices, and social role. I will say that Falun Gong as a doctrine (and surely many of its members) thinks modern science and evolution are fake and is explicitly racist, which is also true of the organized Christian beliefs of most of the US government and military. Li Hongzhi permanently relocated to the US in 1998 and probably lives at their headquarters in New York state. They started publishing Epoch Times, as well as a TV station called New Tang Dynasty Television, in the early 2000s. Both of these focus on news from/about China with a very explicit anti-CCP focus, as well as "traditional Chinese culture" programming like dance, cooking, martial arts, etc. They don't particularly promote the religious teachings of Falun Gong itself in those outlets, although they certainly highlight the persecution of its members in China above other issues. Shen Yun was founded in 2006 based on the apparent popularity of their dance and entertainment shows in reaching outside audiences. By the way, "traditional Chinese culture" (whose? from when? what ethnicities? where was it practiced?) is used by both Falun Gong and the Chinese government itself when they promote their image abroad. It's very funny to me that Shen Yun plays up how "traditional culture" (like our beautiful dances!) is persecuted by the CCP. The Chinese government-sponsored Confucius Institutes, where I studied Mandarin in high school/college in the US, are submersed in exactly the same cooking/Tang sancai/Beijing opera stuff for both their public outreach and language curriculum. My view is that Falun Gong and its surrounding media organizations oppose the Chinese government and specifically the CCP mainly because it shut them down in China in the late 90s and continues to imprison and kill their adherents, and the Chinese government opposes Falun Gong mainly because it's a large and organized group abroad with influence among some people in mainland China that also explicitly rejects the CCP. I think that, to the very limited extent Falun Gong has influence with politicians and government in the US, it's because they're the most organized Chinese expatriate group that opposes the government. None of that requires Falun Gong to have a clearly articulated "pro-democracy" or other political program. They're certainly anticommunist in that they oppose the Chinese Communist Party (and the feeling is extremely mutual, although the CCP uses stronger weapons than dance recitals) and want to see it removed from power, and many of their members have conservative beliefs, but they're not the new KMT or anything. I haven't picked up an Epoch Times in a while, but I imagine to the extent the media organization is pro-Trump, it's because he Stands Up To China and they hope to get his attention and support. Falun Gong definitely highlights the persecution of their members in China (including prisoners being killed for their organs) over other issues, but that doesn't make it untrue. This wiki page goes over the evidence specifically for organ harvesting. "Overpopulated prison population being used for organ donation" doesn't cover it - the claim is that organ removals are part of a targeted program of imprisoning, torturing, and killing Falun Gong adherents specifically. It's deeply disturbing to me that the official Chinese response has basically been "nuh uh" without giving a clear and simple explanation for where all those on-demand human organs are coming from.
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Jun 4, 2020 12:03
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COVID-420 posted:i think its because Falun Gong is deeply racist, homophobic, theocratic etc and so are the forces that empower Trump Wow, yeah, I spent some time reading the current Epoch Times page and I retract that. They're deeply and vocally pro-Trump alongside the specifically anti-CCP material and actually are a driving engine of the Trump media sphere. They're fully down with QAnon and heavily promote it online, too. You can see the blending of the two streams when they universally call coronavirus "CCP Virus" in their articles. It seems like that's a new development since 2015 - I didn't get the impression they were immersed in the pre-Trump right wing media world. The only thing I'd say about theocratic is to be clear that they're not an evangelical group. There also isn't particularly a hierarchy exercising control over practitioners or aggressively seeking donations/charging money; the group just isn't structured that way. That probably doesn't have much bearing on the Epoch Times or their media organizations though. From their US news section yesterday: Antifa, Other Far-Left Groups Exploit Protests for ‘Revolution’ quote:Communist groups—including the extremist organization Antifa—are hijacking what started out as peaceful protests over the death of an unarmed black man to usher in a revolution, according to officials, experts, videos, and anarchists’ own words. oh would you look at that INFOGRAPHIC: How the Chinese Regime Colluded With WHO During the Pandemic quote:Since the Chinese Communist Party virus (CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus) first broke out in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated the Chinese regime’s talking points. It initially parroted the Chinese regime’s official statements that there was little or no risk of human-to-human transmission of the virus. Mounting evidence, including from leaked internal documents, however, shows that the regime knew about the outbreak’s severity and hid it from the public. The virus has since spread to more than 200 countries and territories, with more than 4 million people infected and more than 300,000 deaths worldwide.
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Jun 5, 2020 00:48
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